If you take the same amount of taxes for SS, Medicare, etc, but slash the benefits, isn't that "raising taxes" under the new conservative definition? Why do you want to raise taxes?

Both parties are insulting our intelligence right now. They are both saying that they want to leave the tax rates the same (Obama wants to slightly increase the rate for very wealthy citizens). However, they want to eliminated the more common tax deductions, so that tax will be pain of more of our income. Yet they expect us to accept the lie that this is not, of itself, a tax increase. The bottom line is that once again, the middle class is going to get screwed.

Thunderpipes:Skw33tis: Thunderpipes: ...Minorities really do breed much faster. So do poor people. They all vote for whomever gives them the most free stuff...

Oh, but Republicans aren't racists, and the Democrats are the real racists for saying so. Right.

No doubt, it's an isolated incident.

What do facts have to do with racism? You are aware of the facts about demographics, right? Democrats, but even more now that Obama is the Messiah, get the overwhelming majority of minority votes. This is a fact. They breed faster, also a fact. Democrats can remain in power, and even gain in power simply by promising free stuff.

I don't think anyone will dispute that some demographic groups are statistically growing faster. There's no inherent racism in acknowledging that. However, here's where you are a racist: "They all vote for whomever gives them the most free stuff. The part that makes that line especially offensive is the implication that all minorities are welfare leeches, when anyone with even an iota of experience with the world could provide at least a couple of anecdotal examples to the contrary. It was racism when Ronald Reagan trotted out his line about "welfare queens," and it's racism when you repeat it in a veiled fashion.

Also, like several others in this thread, I seem to have missed Democratic campaign promises of free "stuff" for minorities. Feel free to provide examples.

JackieRabbit:GoodyearPimp: Thunderpipes: We need to reform the big entitlements.

If you take the same amount of taxes for SS, Medicare, etc, but slash the benefits, isn't that "raising taxes" under the new conservative definition? Why do you want to raise taxes?

Both parties are insulting our intelligence right now. They are both saying that they want to leave the tax rates the same (Obama wants to slightly increase the rate for very wealthy citizens). However, they want to eliminated the more common tax deductions, so that tax will be pain of more of our income. Yet they expect us to accept the lie that this is not, of itself, a tax increase. The bottom line is that once again, the middle class is going to get screwed.

Really? When did Obama say he wanted to screw with deductions? I am not saying he didn't, just saying I haven't seen it.

Over the weekend, while debating this, I proved to the person they're a racist and they failed to see it. They said Social Services only enable minorities. I brought up single mothers into the argument and he said it was because they were impregnated by 'lazy, do nothing black men' and they deserved this for having a mulatto kid, but with Obama at least they can tell the kid he can grow up to be president.

So, I went out of my way, coaxing the debate until he said: "Helping minorities with social programs only adds to the problem." I got them to confess adding money into the system through labor works, and then said that putting the poor to work through knowledge is the key to helping us then. He replied: "Minorities don't deserve money." He honestly couldn't see how this is a racist statement. Working for proper wages is something reserved for White People, minorities should be paid less. This was his revelation, and pointing it out, failed to see how this was a racist statement.

I could write a thesis on this, but I'm waiting for Thunderpipes to come make some more ridiculous statements.

Jackson Herring:Minorities really do breed much faster. So do poor people. They all vote for whomever gives them the most free stuff...

[i.imgur.com image 454x340]

Poe's Law gets more and more true with each passing day, but I don't get that vibe here. I think Thunderpipes is genuine, based on some of his past posts, though more than anything I feel sorry for him. I get the impression that he's basically a regular guy who has suffered in his life at the hands of authority figures, and has a bit too much of an authoritarian streak to be able to realize it.

coeyagi:JackieRabbit: GoodyearPimp: Thunderpipes: We need to reform the big entitlements.

If you take the same amount of taxes for SS, Medicare, etc, but slash the benefits, isn't that "raising taxes" under the new conservative definition? Why do you want to raise taxes?

Both parties are insulting our intelligence right now. They are both saying that they want to leave the tax rates the same (Obama wants to slightly increase the rate for very wealthy citizens). However, they want to eliminated the more common tax deductions, so that tax will be pain of more of our income. Yet they expect us to accept the lie that this is not, of itself, a tax increase. The bottom line is that once again, the middle class is going to get screwed.

Really? When did Obama say he wanted to screw with deductions? I am not saying he didn't, just saying I haven't seen it.

Obama said last Friday that he is open to hearing options and that one of the options he would consider is eliminating some common deductions. He spun it as deduction common to the wealthy, but the CBO states that the ones batted around thus far are common to both the wealthy and the middle class (mortgage interest being one of the primary). The Democratic leadership has said that this is a bipartisan issue and that they can come to terms with the Republicans on this option.

Thunderpipes:Headso: Thunderpipes: They breed faster, also a fact. Democrats can remain in power, and even gain in power simply by promising free stuff.

what if they promise free abortions? did I just blow your mind?

Well, considering that they ran on that, well, ya.

I just wish liberals would actually care and think about solutions, instead of how to use tax dollars to stay in power. The deficit crisis is bad, and getting much worse each day, and none of you care. Are any of you parents? Don't you care that in 10-20 years we will be in deep, deep trouble with no way out?

I wish Republicans would think about long term issues instead of short term gains. Allow environmental destruction for short term gain? Sure, why not. Yeah, we only get one earth, and our children and grandchildren only have what we leave them, but we have fiscal year profit margins to consider. Yes, oil and coal have an expiration date, but why even attempt to build an economy that isn't hamstrung by dependence on these, when we have short-term growth to consider. Large corporations are great for your pocket book if you're in your 50's or 60's, and have your future income tied up in stocks, but this massive shift of commerce to only the largest players chokes out small businesses, the entrepreneurial first steps that the young will need to build THEIR futures.

I look at a city like San Francisco, and I see that 85% are employed by businesses withHow many of our most promising minds have been born into families of limited means, educated in underfunded schools, been subjected to limited nutrition and toxic civic life, while dull minds born to the 'right' families have arrived to positions of influence instead?

The Democratic party has its flaws - our nation essentially has a multiparty system, and the minority parties cobble together two big-tent coalitions. I find the devotion to affirmative action particularly damaging, as it encourages a cheap band-aid approach to diversity, rather than the more expensive (in the short term) investments in minority/underprivileged communities which would allow them to compete fairly in the future.

It's still a stark improvement over the Republican vision. All this "durrr Soshulizm! Redistribution!" nonsense is cynical and disheartening - We need to ensure that the playing field is balanced to allow small businesses to compete (corporate regulation and monopoly busting), to encourage upstarts (social safety net, stable healthcare), to ensure that more people can be fully invested in our society, have skin in the game, so to speak.

But, anything that interferes with the ability of boomers to retire with healthy dividends on their 401Ks and live out their golden years in homogenous, gated communities is clearly the end of the American Dream. I vote to built a country for my kids and future grandchildren, not help boomers cash out this country in a grand sell-off.

Let's give them $1 BILLION in free stuff each year! What? That's only $3.34 per person per year in the US? Less than 1 penny a day?

Let's move the goalposts like you frequently do:

$10 BILLION? $33.40/year. Less than 1 dime a day.$100 BILLION???? $334/year. Less than 1 dollar a day.

ARE YOU TOO FARKING CHEAP TO HELP OUT THE POOR IN A WORST CASE SCENARIO OF $1 A DAY?

Uh bad math I think. You should define poor and then delegate the money because for now not every person in America is poor. So it should be like 2 dollars a day or something on your high end. might even be $2.01 using Romney math of 47%.

yousaywut:mainstreet62: The poor get SO MUCH in free stuff, DunderPipes.

Let's give them $1 BILLION in free stuff each year! What? That's only $3.34 per person per year in the US? Less than 1 penny a day?

Let's move the goalposts like you frequently do:

$10 BILLION? $33.40/year. Less than 1 dime a day.$100 BILLION???? $334/year. Less than 1 dollar a day.

ARE YOU TOO FARKING CHEAP TO HELP OUT THE POOR IN A WORST CASE SCENARIO OF $1 A DAY?

Uh bad math I think. You should define poor and then delegate the money because for now not every person in America is poor. So it should be like 2 dollars a day or something on your high end. might even be $2.01 using Romney math of 47%.

Point taken, let's double everything to account for, say, 50% of our population not contributing to taxes, to make the math easier.

Interpret this as you will, but it would take 1.35 million votes in the right states to swing the election to a 404 EV landslide. I looked at Nate Silver's list of states in order of vote margin and checked for the closest tipping-point state to 400, which was Arizona for 404, then I spot-checked a few states further down to see if there was a more efficient path to 400. I think this is the likeliest scenario to get to 400+.

In order of increasing feasibility:

97,465 votes would swing North Carolina- 347-191202,202 more votes would swing Arizona- 358-180203,751 more votes would swing South Carolina- 367-171263,930 more votes would swing Missouri- 377-161272,195 more votes would swing Indiana- 388-150308,460 more votes would swing Georgia- 404-134

1.35 million more votes total.

Others ways of looking at this:

It would have taken an across-the-board 4.7% shift to swing the 66 EVs necessary for Romney to win, which represents 2.8 million votes.

It would have taken an across-the-board 11.1% shift to swing the 72 EVs necessary for Obama to win, which represents 6.9 million votes.

Romney would have had an easier time winning the election than Obama would have had winning a 404 EV landslide, even though the EV swing is roughly similar. This is true whether your metric is cherry-picking state votes (stupid) or an overall swing in popular votes (more likely).

My feeling is that this represents a combination of a well-executed campaign for Obama and a poor one for Romney. Obama's ceiling was realistically 347 EVs. Let's assume that Romney could have won, and assume that the final result was the mean of a population of outcomes with a possible +/- 4.7% across-the board swing. In this scenario, realistic outcomes for the election were anywhere from Romney barely winning to Obama reaching his EV ceiling (which is likely why any thinking person called the election for Obama).

This Breitbart article actually makes me lean toward interpreting this as a well-executed Obama campaign, since he won precisely the votes that he needed to win. The road to an Obama 404 EV landslide would be rough: almost twice as many votes as it would take for Romney to have won. But Romney winning was well within his reach, and he failed to convince the few million voters it would have taken to win. So, in reality, the score was decisive, but Romney realistically could have executed a win. I read way to much fivethirtyeight over the past few months, but I liked the field goal analogy. Romney lost by a field goal, and, on the surface, a field goal is easy to execute. But, in the end, Obama's team had the ball (after the post-debates, Sandy "turnover"), called the victory formation, and put a few knees down to win.

I think it's worth noting that even if we switched to another metric, perhaps offensive yards instead of points (because it gives every offensive yard a voice in the outcome, whether it was in a scoring drive or not, darnit!), Obama still won. And, in the end, his offense had the ball, and Romney's offense wasn't gaining yards.

/Offensive yards = popular vote in case I made a poor case for this analogy.

Skw33tis:SwiftFox: nekom: Skw33tis: I also sympathize with the argument that, under a pure popular-vote system, populous states like New York, California, and Texas would have disproportionate influence. To be fair, if most of the population lives in a few states, those states probably should be disproportionally influential, but smaller states shouldn't be de-facto shut out of the process, either.

Yeah, I can certainly understand a small state's desire to appear relevant, but as you said it's also easy to argue that a state with a higher population rightfully SHOULD have more clout.

I always figured perhaps it once made sense in logistics in the days when ballots were carried on horseback or whatever.

Um, so "disproportionally" means everyone's vote means the same and "proportionally" means the vote of the guy in the littlest state (population) has a lot more influence?

I used the term "disproportionally" to refer to the influence of populous states over sparsely populated states under a pure popular-vote system. I'm sympathetic to both sides of the issue.

The electoral college was designed as a way for states, not individuals, to select a president. Of course, this was designed this way because, in the 18th century, a president was little more than a foreign-policy interface between the states and the rest of the world. Now that the scope of the office is so much larger, I think there is an argument for updating the system. However, given that I'm somewhat temperamentally (though not really politically, anymore) conservative, I tend to favor updating with smaller, incremental changes.

And that's what it's all about. What we have is a blend of both sides of the houses of Congress, Senate elected by state. House of Representatives elected by population. President a 20/87 blend of the two, with 4.35 times as much influence for the whole population as the collective voters of each state. Each state's Senate influence keeps everyone from running roughshod over the rights of minorities, House of Representatives keeps things democratic with a small "d" plus has to propose taxes by population-only influence, but still needing approval of the states-apportioned Senate.

And the President is a blend of that. Mainly beholden to the population as a whole, but kept mindful of the small states.

Silverstaff:Rather funny the Republicans are whining about the Electoral College being unfair, since it was a key plank in their platform this year:

From the 2012 Republican Platform (Link)"The Continuing Importance of Protecting the Electoral College (Top)

We oppose the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact or any other scheme to abolish or distort the procedures of the Electoral College. We recognize that an unconstitutional effort to impose "national popular vote" would be a mortal threat to our federal system and a guarantee of corruption as every ballot box in every state would become a chance to steal the presidency."

In other words, they thought they would get an EC win, and just in case Obama won the popular vote they were wanting to set up their opposition to changing to a popular vote system.

They'll turn their backs on their own party platform in a moment if they think it'll increase their odds of being elected, they don't care about platform or positions or principles, only power for powers sake.

I agree right up to the end. The power is not for its own sake, its for the sake of a money grab.

Think of fishing. Dems want to stock the pond and cast their lines and reel in your money one fish at a time. Repubs are the guys fishing with dynamite.

dustygrimp:Think of fishing. Dems want to stock the pond and cast their lines and reel in your money one fish at a time. Repubs are the guys fishing with dynamite trying to hijack the tanker truck before it gets to the lake.

meta1hed:Just curious, how many miliatry votes were thrown away/not gotten to the troops overseas?

Well, since troops overseas can vote absentee, the DoD made a big drive to make sure every servicemember who wanted to vote did, and that they could send in their absentee ballots months in advance, probably not a lot.

I know that the Republicans are whining and crying and soiling their diapers that they lost, that they were convinced right up to the very end (despite poll numbers saying otherwise) that Romney was going to win, so they are trying to look for why it didn't happen, certain that somehow some trickery is why it didn't happen.

The Republicans went out of their way to suppress low-income voters through Voter ID laws, tried to reduce/eliminate early voting which let people working odd hours vote at more convenient times, spent over a half-billion dollars on campaigning (including a ridiculous amount of TV and radio ads), lied so much that every other word out of their mouths was a prevarication, slung mud, tried to have priests and preachers tell parishioners they were going to Hell if they voted for Obama, used fear constantly by implying that if they lost the USA would instantly turn into a Stalinist-style Communist state, and pandered heavily to whites, Evangelical Christians, the wealthy and the elderly. . .they did everything they could to win the election other than appealing to the majority of the American people. . . and they still lost clearly in both the popular vote and EC.

Shaggy_C:Holocaust Agnostic: Small states are already overrepresented in the House and wildly overrepresented in the Senate. They have a voice in government. The EC needs to go.

And then, rather than campaigning in 13 states, presidential candidates will only campaign in the NYC, Chicago, Houston, Philly, and LA metro areas.

That adds up to about 60 million people, in a country of over 300 million. Without the EC, it's hard to imagine a scenario where campaigning only to about 20% of the total electorate would be a winning strategy.

brobdiggy:Not protesting Obama or anything, but the Electoral College "winner take all" system is absolutely stupid.

Every election we hear the "your vote counts" garbage. That's not true. The message should be "your vote counts if you live in Ohio or Florida".

I understand why we don't do national popular voting (recount nightmares... yikes)... but voting should be done electorally be DISTRICT instead of at the STATE level.In other words, All states should do what Nebraska and Maine do..It makes the most sense, and it doesn't leave voters feeling disenfranchised like the current system does.

However, it would never pass, because liberals in blue states and conservatives in red states wouldn't allow it.

Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion:PunGent: Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion: MrVeach: How is it a democracy if half the people want someone else as president? Maybe they should split the term percentagewise based on votes. Obama first 25 months, Romney last 23? Stagger it?

Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion:MrVeach: How is it a democracy if half the people want someone else as president? Maybe they should split the term percentagewise based on votes. Obama first 25 months, Romney last 23? Stagger it?

It's not a democracy. It's a representative republic.

The two are not mutually exclusive. I am sick of this false dichotomy.

Thunderpipes:swaniefrmreddeer: And he would have lost the popular vote still by a large margin. The electoral college is a f*cked up system.

Really is, 4-5 states should not decide an election. Candidates not even needing to campaign in the largest states as well is just silly. And it does stifle voter turnout. If you live in CA and are not a Democrat, Texas and not a Pub, you know your vote is thrown out, so why do it? Same here in VT, unless you are a Democrat, your vote is useless.

Obama's victory doesn't constitute a mandate for his far left agenda to "transform America" into some nightmarish amalgam combining the worst features of a European socialist state with an Indonesian oligarchy.

I think it's embarrassing that so many Americans cannot differentiate between people who are delusional and people who are rational.